The Idea of Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union
This is a collection of fascinating essays that address European identity in terms of politics, law, religion, culture, literature, and psychology, asking what “Europe” has meant in the past, and what it will mean in the future. In the massive literature of European integration, no other book takes such a long historical perspective nor deals so directly with the question of identity.
To take just two examples: J. G. A. Pocock’s contribution, “Some Europes in Their History,” traces in part the location of Europe, which was originally defined as what was across the Bosporus from Asia, but by the late twentieth century was centered about fourteen hundred miles to the west in France. In another chapter, Elie Cohen asks what happens to national identity when a country gives up its national currency, under the title, “The Euro, Economic Federalism, and the Question of National Sovereignty.” Other chapters study what united Europe in the medieval and early modern periods, examine notions of European selfhood, and investigate European integration and federation.
Contributors are Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Talal Asad, Andrés de Blas Guerrero, Hans W. Blom, Elie Cohen, Daniela Engelmann-Martin, Biancamaria Fontana, Michael Herzfeld, William Chester Jordan, Wilfried Nippel, Anthony Pagden, Luisa Passerini, J.G.A. Pocock, Thomas Risse, Philip Ruttley, and James Tully.
